officer, have a great deal at stake in this bill. but it's also a bill that affects every state, farm or otherwise, touches the lives of every american people through the healthy food on our kitchen tables or our children's classrooms, clean water that's the result of critical conservation programs, rural businesses on main street receiving assistance from usda, new energy products resulting from research, benefits we all get from our local farm system. farming is part of our national security. keeping american agriculture strong and vibrant is at the core of this bill. now, is it the farm bill that i would have drafted? no. but i could go around every one of the other the 9 senators. it is not exactly what any of us would. but to get a farm bill, it always has to be a compromise. i will continue to work with the

chairwoman and the ranking member. it does include a major dairy reform proposal. i know that both our producers and consumers will be helped to movmove away from the dangerous roller coast other of prices. it scroops out dated price supports. it has a new risk-management plan that protects farm income from margins shrinking dangerously and does it at a lower cost than the program it replaces. dairy is vermont's single-most important agriculture community. if the senator has a concern about the dairy reforms in this bill, i would be glad to discuss them with him. there's been a lot of misinformation about the provisions, and i welcome an opportunity to eliminate any confusion. so let us work together on this.

we can come together in a bipartisan way, just as we did on the senate agriculture committee. the farm bill represents an investment in american agriculture that will benefit our producers, our rural communities, our main street businesses, taxpayers, and consumers, and the neediest among us. and it deserves our attention. i'd ask consent that my full statement be made part of the record. the presiding officer: without objection. so ordered. mr. leahy: and, madam president, let me refer to the issue before you the nomination- the issue before us, the nomination before us. i recognize the distinguished senior nor from ohio will speak again afterward. jeffrey helmick was rated "well-qualified" by a substantial majority of the a.b.a. committee of the federal

judiciary. that's the highest rating any nominee can get. in his 22-year legal career as a litigator in private prarks he's tried approximately 40 cases to verdict or judgment. most lawyers who practice today do not goi begin to have that experience. he is currently a principal at his law firm. has the strong support of his home state senators, one a democrat, one a republican, who have spoken in support of him. he was voted out of the judiciary committee almost three months ago by a bipartisan majority, mr. president. so given his distinguished record in private practice, his bipartisan support, i trust he'll be confirmed. now, some have chosen to criticize him for his role as a court-appointed defense attorney. anybody to make that criticism actually obviously does not understand how our justice

system works. our legal adversary system, our legal system is an adversary system that's predicated upon legal advocacy for both sides. that's what mr. helmick did at the request of the court. it really shows a misunderstanding of why we have the best legal system in the world, people don't understand that both sides -- both sides, both sides -- are supposed to be adequately represented, and no nominee should be disqualified for representing clients, especially when the courts ask hem to. at his confirmation hearing to become chief justice of the united states, john roberts made this point. quote "it is a tradition the american bar goes back before the founding of the country. the lawyers are not identified with a position of their clients. most famous example probably is john adams who represented the

british soldiers charged in the boston massacre. he did that for a reason, because he wanted to show that the revolution in which he was involved was not about overturning the rule of law; it was about vindicating the rule of law." and, mr. president, just by that. here is a man who became president of the united states, a man who was helping to lead the effort to separate us from the rule of great britain, but he was willing to defend british soldiers who were charged with the massacre of the people who wanted to be free of great britain. the founders thought -- and this is what every lawyer would think -- that they were not being given their rights your honor the british system, which they were entitled, and by representing the british soacialtion he helped show that what they were about was defending the rule of larks not undermining it.

the principle that you don't identify the lawyer with particular views of the client or the views that the lawyer advances on behalf of the client is critical to the fair administration of justice. that last part was a quote from the justice roberts, and i'd ask consent that justice roberts' whole quote be put in its entirety. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: now, mr. helmick was appointed by the court to represent a defendant. he had the ethical obligation to advocate zealously for that client. that's what he did. he shouldn't be punished for doing that and it really does not do credit to the united states of america or to the united states senate to criticize somebody that the court appoints to defend somebody and then criticize them for doing it. it is what keeps us all free. apparently there has been an objection to mr. helmick's

handing of an ethical dilemma, where he refused to disclose a client's secret. i don't know why they object to that because the ohio court of appeals who heard the case said that mr. helmick should be commended for his professional, ethical behavior in a very difficult situation. in addition, though, he had a divided ohio supreme court, a 4-3 decision, with the disclosure of this letter agreed unanimously with mr. helmick the letter was the client's secret, said he acted in good faith. well, come on ... when you represent a client, you act within the ethical rules, which he did; you act with zealousness, which he did; and you uphold the kind of representation we expect, that

john adams shoes showe showed u. mr. president, i ask that my full statement be made part of the record and i yield the balance of my time to the distinguished senior senator from ohio. the presidinwithout objection, ferraro officer without objection -- the presiding officer: without objection, the statement will be made part of the record and the distinguished senator from ohio is recognized. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i appreciate the kind word and the insight from chairman leahy and his leadership on trying to speed up the confirmation process 0e on a whole host of judges. i have a lot of respect for my colleague from iowa, but i take exception for with a couple of things he said. he compared the number of nominations during the second

bush four years with the first four obama years saying that the senate was more cooperative then -- now than it was then. clearly it was apples and oranges. we know almost any school kid in america now knows the dysfunction of the united states senate in terms of the minority party blocking all kinds of things, from medium- to low-level federal appointments to the executive branch, to district court judges, to legislation. so i think that senator leahy has addressed that very aptly, i don't need to go into detail there. senator leahy also has spoken to the two public disagreements, the two criticisms, shallow and vacuous that they are, of jeffrey helmick, the one on terrorist -- representing terrorists -- i am not a lawyer, but i know when a federal judge

asked a lawyer to represent somebody, the lawyer does it, as jeffrey helmick did. and as senator leahy said on the ethics issue, the ohio court of appeals said that mr. helmick should be commended. the supreme court agreed unanimously that the letter he talked about was a client secret and that mr. helmick acted in good faith. those criticisms are -- don't really stand the test of time in that way. i'll just close with this, mr. president. again, thanking senator leahy and the judiciary committee for moving as quickly as they could move in a difficult time with, sometime, senate dysfunction and the minority blocking or slow-walking so many of these nominees. jeffrey helmick has been supported by a bipartisan, rigorous committee of 17, coming from southern ohio, helping to choose nominees for the northern

district of ohio. i spoke personally with all but one or two of those 17 republicans and democrats, around whom consensus formed in support of jeffrey helmick. they think he is an outstanding lawyer, jurist, potential federal judges. other federal judges of the western region of the northern districdistrict of ohio, includa judge appointed by george w. bush, enususe in enthusiasticaly support him. senator gassily said he was controversial. he is only controversial in the senate judiciary committee and among some of my colleagues. he is not controversial in ohio where they know jeffrey helmick the most. he is not controversial in the toltoledo impar association. he is not croafsial in ohio. he is not controversial among people who know jeffrey helmick hoves who have watched him

personally in his service to community, who have watched him professional lay in the way that he does his job as a lawyer in toledo, ohio, in northwest, ohio, in federal court or in state court. so the fact is he is not a controversial nominee. he is only a controversial nominee in the united states senate and in some places in washington, d.c. but he's qualified -- we know he's qualified, ready to serve. i ask my colleagues to vote today to confirm jeffrey helmick to the united states federal court, northern district of eowe. enorthern district of o. ohio. i yield the floor. mr. leahy: mr. president, i yield back the remainder of the time and ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: does any senator in the chamber wish to change his or her vote or still vish -- wish to vote? if not, on this nomination the yeas are 62, the nays are 36. the nominee is confirmed. under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table. the president will be immediately notified of the senate's action, and the senate will resume legislative session. the senator from utah. mr. hatch: mr. president. the presiding officer: may we have order, please, for the senator from utah. mr. hatch: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah.

mr. hatch: i rise today to comment on the results of last night's recall election in the state of wisconsin. after nearly two years of heated political debate, the people of wisconsin made it clear last night that they are not suffering from buyers' remorse. two years ago, they elected leaders committed to solving their state's budget crisis, and last night they stood by those leaders for making the hard choices that turned wisconsin's deficit into a surplus. yesterday's election was very important. it was important because of the example it provides to the nation and the world of how a democracy should work with citizens who disagree vehemently about policy nonetheless coming together to accept the results of an open and fair election. and it was important because of the message that it sends with respect to public employee unions. last night's results serve as yet another reminder that the american people want serious answers to our nation's fiscal problems and they are tired of

having labor unions dictate the terms of our economic recovery. scott walker never hid his agenda. he ran for office on a platform of reducing state spending, and governor walker immediately began addressing the state's problems after taking office. so what egregious acts did governor walker commit during his first months in office to trigger this recall? well, first of all, his budget repair bill actually required wisconsin state employees to contribute more to their pensions. prior to passage of the walker budget, many state employees did not contribute to their retirement benefits. you heard that right. facing a massive state deficit, governor walker determined that wisconsin taxpayers should no longer foot the entire bill for the generous pensions of public employees. in other words, he asked state public employees to do what private sector employees have

done for a generation -- contribute to their own retirement plans. next, he required that state employees pay a larger share of their health care premiums. the new law requires state employees to pay 12.6% of their health care premiums. by contrast, federal employees pay at least 25% of their health care premiums. to put these reforms in terms that his liberal detractors might appreciate, the governor was just asking for a little shared sacrifice. instead of pitching in, however, the state's public employees pitched a fit. then most significantly governor walker formed the collective bargaining system -- re-formed the collective bargaining system for state employees. above all else, it was this decision that triggered the meltdown in wisconsin last year that ultimately led to the recall. facing the possibility that a state might successfully limit

union influence and excesses, national labor groups turned wisconsin into the front lines of labor agitation. now, i know that some have tried to give me a reputation for being antiunion. that's ridiculous because i was raised in the union movement. i held a card for ten -- basically ten years as i worked as a skilled tradesman in the -- in the construction industry. but in fact i am not opposed to unionization if that is what employees truly want. i simply believe that workers should be free to choose whether or not to unionize in an environment that is free of coercion or intimidation, and once unions are formed, i do not believe they should enjoy disproportionate bargaining power in their negotiations with management. that said, unions of public

sector employees present a unique set of issues for taxpayers and voters. public sector unions have inherent advantages in negotiations that private sector unions do not. most notably, public sector unions use their substantial influence in state politics to elect the very officials with whom they will be negotiating their union contracts. as the academic dan disalvo and many others have recognized, when the ford motor company negotiates with american auto workers, it is an arm's length negotiation with both parties having an interest in the ongoing success of the firm, yet public employee unions effectively negotiate with themselves. there is no distance between them and the public officials that they helped to elect and expect payback from. franklin roosevelt understood that because public employee unions could elect their own boss. -- quote -- "the process of

collective bargaining as usually understood cannot be transplanted into the public service, unquote. that was franklin delano roosevelt. george meany, the first head of the afl-cio, knew that this relationship made it -- quote - "impossible to bargain collectively with the government." unquote. now, these critical points were lost on today's democratic party which -- are lost on today's democratic party which increasingly depends on the food soldiers and largess provided by these unions. as a result, we have an untenable situation where public sector unions are in effect negotiating against the taxpayers. after all, their salaries and benefits come at the expense of the taxpayers. the fiscal impact of these ridden negotiations is most evident in states with the biggest budget problems. california faces a budget deficit of nearly $16 billion this year alone.

it has $65 billion in unfunded liabilities in its teachers' pension system and $136 billion in unfunded liability for its largest city and county employee pension systems. the illinois public employee pension system now has $83 billion in unfunded liabilities. so far, comprehensive efforts to reform these systems and bring down costs have been stymied for one simple reason -- politicians in those states do not have the courage of people like governor scott walker. and our folks here who support the unions really ought to be happy that this is happening because they themselves may not be able to accomplish this. the courageous governors like governor walker can, and in the end, they are better off as democrats because you have some reasonable approach towards some

of these inordinate problems that are affecting our states. now, instead of reforming their system, those states have more often opted to raise taxes to attempt to eliminate the shortfalls, yet most of the states with the highest unfunded liabilities already have higher than average tax rates. despite their many faults, private sector unions have a stake in the u.s. economy and the profitability of american businesses. indeed, they have a built-in incentive to ensure continued economic growth. true enough, they do not always act in accordance with that interest, which is probably the biggest reason why today less than 7% of private sector workers belong to a union, but nevertheless they need some level of continued growth in order to further their existence. public sector unions are an entirely different animal with a completely different set of interests. unlike private sector businesses, state governments are not required to turn a

profit. state officials are accountable to voters, but unlike stockholders, most voters do not have the same expectations to see returns on their investments. that being the case, public sector unions lack the same incentive to see their negotiating counterparts succeed. there are no forces limiting their incentive to simply maximize benefits for their membership, regardless of what it might cost their employers. in order to succeed, even the most ambitious and shrewd private sector union needs to account for its employer's ability to grow and expand. public sector unions are not subject to these sorts of limitations. that is probably why they have been so successful. today about 37% of government employees belong to a union, which is five times the unionization rate in the private

sector. so it is easy to see why big labor pulled out all the stops to recall governor walker. public sector unions are the future of the labor movement, because of the long-standing decline of private sector unions, big labor knows that it must maintain the strength of public sector unions in order to remain relevant, yet at the same time the states that employ them face incredibly difficult budgetary decisions in the coming years, and i believe without the ability to be able to get them under control because of the controls of the major parties. let's be clear about what it would mean if public employee unions prevailed in these fights. it means that instead of reducing spending, states will have to raise taxes. it means that instead of eliminating government waste, states will have to maintain the status quo.

ultimately, it means that states will have to make a choice between paying their bills on the one hand and growing their economies on the other. going forward, it is absolutely vital that more states follow wisconsin's example. states should not have to choose between ceaght -- educating their kids and paying the full freight of public employee pensions. during such difficult economic times, they should not have to raise taxes to keep their employees from having to pay a reasonable share of their own benefits. in short, states should have the ability to balance budgetary priorities without being thwarted at every turn by public employee unions that are only concerned with their own interests. mr. president, last night and this morning, the pundits were in full gear. assessing the results in wisconsin and process nothingity

indicating about the election's long-term impact. to me, this exercise in democracy demonstrates two things. first, the failure of the unions and the national democratic party was not a failure of messaging or money. it was a failure of ideas. richard weaver once wrote that ideas have consequences. that is absolutely true. and the ideas that governor walker proposed were reasonable ones that addressed a critical fiscal situation without undermining essential services in his state. and second, it is clear that the democratic party of franklin roosevelt, a party of blue-collar private sector workers, has morphed into a party dominated by white-collar public workers. and the american people, beginning with wisconsin, are rejecting this democratic party and the priorities of its most influential stakeholders. the silent majority that gets up

every day and goes to work in the private sector is losing its appetite for allowing public employee unions to dictate the nation's fiscal policy. there is one video going around of an opponent of governor walker's near tears and saying that democracy was denied -- or is denied tonight. au contraire. democracy is alive and well in wisconsin and around the nation, and the american people are going to have their say. last night's results should serve as a reminder of the need to face our perilous fiscal situation honestly and squarely. it should also remind us that the american people will not punish leaders who stand up and do the right thing. even in the face of powerful and vengeful opposition. my hope is that the experience in wisconsin will be replicated around the country.

to borrow from one of wisconsin's patron saints, vince lombardi, winning is a habit. unfortunately, so is losing. the unions have now had three bites at the apple since governor walker was first elected, and each time they have come up short. by prevailing, governor walker and republicans in wisconsin should stiffen the spines of conservatives who might have been previously unwilling to take on these public sector unions, public employee unions, if you will, and by losing, those unions have shown themselves to be increasingly desperate and out of touch with the sentiments and concerns of everyday citizens and taxpayers. mr. president, i commend governor walker and his efforts to secure a prosperous future for the citizens of wisconsin. his courage in the face of significant opposition is a model of statesmanship, and i look forward to working with him for many years to come.

look, we all know that public-sector unions have been out of control for a long time and that includes our country. that includes the federal government employee unions, where the average pay is $80,000 a year compared to $50,000 for the private-sector average pay. we all know that -- that that's justified in the eyes of some because it is so expensive to live in washington washington, r nearby. why is that expensive? because we've built the federal government at all costs and we've allowed it just continue to spend and spend and spend until we now have control by public-sector unions who demand more expenditures rather than more ways of living within our means. there's a part of me that wishes that we could move a number of these agencies out of washington and put them out with the real people throughout our country who have to live within their means and who really don't have

to have huge washington, d.c., pays -- which are huge to the average person, maybe not huge to people who work in this very expensive town -- and where they can really mingle with the everyday people in this country who are paying the freight. by the way, we all know that -- that according to the joint committee on taxation, the bolt to --the bottom 51% of all houss don't pay any income tax freig freight. there's a method in that madness, it seems to me, but it's the wrong method. and sooner or later we're all going to have to help pull the wagon and not just sit in the wagon and take advantage of everybody else. it ought to be done on a reasonable and -- and decent basis. but we all know that the

public-sector unions are out of control. in the states where they have the biggest problems are the states where the public-sector unions have dominated their elected politicians over and over and over again so that the elected politicians are afraid to take them on, afraid to do the things that really would straighten out their states, as governor walker has done. instead of finding a lot of fault with governor walker, if i was a democrat, i'd be saying, boy, thank god somebody stood up. the fact of the matter is, is that he has stood up and he should be given credit for that, not condemnation. and i watched some of the really outrageous things that some of the people in wisconsin -- a few of the people, of course, tried to pull on him. and, frankly, i am very proud of the people of wisconsin for standing up the way they did.

i think other states are going to have to do that, too, or there are going to be problems like you've never seen before. you can name them. you can name the states. in almost every case, they are blue states. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. when you say: thank you very much -- mr. whitehouse: thank you very much, mr. president. 2 has become a sort of -- it has become a sort of personal tradition of mine to come to the floor each week to report on the status of our -- the dangers to our earth and to our climate from the relentless carbon pollution that we have to face. and this is a bellwether week.

this is our first week back in session in the senate since our break last, and during that time, we have had a first and that is reports from the atmospheric measuring stations that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere broke 400 parts per million. the "christian science monitor" has reported on this, stating, "monitoring stations across the arctic this spring are measuring

more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. the number isn't quite a surprise because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. years ago it passed the 350 parts per million mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. it now stands globally at 395." the story continues, "it has been at least 800,000 years, probably more, since earth saw carbon dioxide in the 400's, according to the climate scientists involved." they point out that the arctic is the leading indicator in global warming, both in carbon

dioxide in the air and in its effects. and peter tans, a senior noaa scientist, says "this is the first time the entire arctic is that high." he call the 400 number number depressing. the "christian science monitor" also reported that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8, nearly 5 billion tons -- nearly 35 billion tons released in 20 2011. the -- another report from the "sustainable business news" is that readings are coming in at 400 parts per million and higher all over the arctic. they've been recorded in alaska, greenland, norway, iceland and even mongolia. 400 parts per million is beyond what scientists consider safe in terms of human society."

it goes on, "in reporting of a 2009 paper in the journal 'science,' researchers concluded, the only time in the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide levels similar to the then-modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to 20 million years ago when the planet was dramatically different. how different was the planet? global temperatures were five to ten degrees fahrenheit higher than they are today. the sea level was 75 to 120 feet higher than it is today. there was no permanent sea ice cap in the arctic and very little ice on antarctica and greenland." according to nasa's leading climate scientist, james hansen, that level of heat-trapping

gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. global temperatures would become intolerable, 20% to 50% of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. civilization would be at risk. so this was a somber benchmark to have passed. as i've said before, we have had the experiences, humankind, of living within a bandwidth of 190 and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide for about 800,000 years, which is going back into the very earliest days of our species, even before then. i think the famous lucy, the

prehistoric human, was 150,000, 160,000 years ago. so this goes way, way back before then. we started ago culture about 10,000 years ago. before then we were picking things off of trees and hunting small animals. i mean, we weren't even farming yet. so you go back 800,000 years, that's basically for as long as we can imagine on this planet without going back into previous geologic eras. so that's been the banned width, 800 -- bandwidth, 890,000 and 390 parts per million. and we've rocketed out of it. we blew through 350 several years ago. now we've gone through 400, at least in the arctic, and the trajectory is that is where we will go global-wide if this continues, and there's no reason why it's not going to continue

because we keep increasing the amount of carbon pollution that we emit into the atmosphere. so i regret that i have to come here every week and continue to bring grim news but that is the fact. and the day will come when we're going to have to deal with it. i hope that it is too late -- that it is not too late for us when we finally do get around to it. there is the prospect that it is too late, because once the carbon is up there in the atmosphere, it continues to do its work. the campaign that has been deploitdeployed to try to dimine subject of climate change, to try to confuse the public, to try to create a disabling measure of doubt has been reprehensible. it is based on falsehood.

it is steeped in impropriety and special influence. and it is inhibiting the ability of the united states congress to do its job for the american people. not because there's any real doubt about the science but because the special interests that benefit from the status quo have entirely inappropriate levels of influence in this body and they are insisting, either directly or through phony front organizations, like the heartland institute, which has recently put itself in jeopardy by comparing people who think that climate change is actually happening to the unabomber. now, there's some responsible public debate. and that blew up in their faces, because at least they had gone too far -- at last they had gone

too far. the lying, the phony science, taking the money from the pliewrkts thpolluters, the wholy operation that they ran did not go too far. the ted kaczynski comparison, the ted kaczynski billboard was that one step too far. so at least there is some pushback on that, but that doesn't lift the burden off of these polluting industries who are both manipulating and maneuvering in washington to prevent us from doing what needs to be done and doing so through false and phony organizations, even if the heartland institute is gone, there are plenty of others. and the process continues and it is going to be, i think, a very harsh judgment that history brings to bear on this generation of representatives and senators that, as a body, we were willing to step away from our duty when the signal was clear, we were willing to listen

to the siren song of special interests who put their money in our pockets, we put our consciences on hold, we hut the blinder-- we put the blinders ot the facts and we marched forward foolishly when we should be preparing. so i'm going to continue to do this, and i hope that the point comes soon when we can begin to realize that putting a price on carbon pollution, developing american clean energy that creates american clean energy jobs and beginning to take care of this world, as it increasingly sends us warnings about the damage that we're doing, is the right and the wise and the proper thing to do. so with that, mr. president, i will yield the floor.

mr. whitehouse: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i am back now at a different desk in order to do the business of closing out the senate for the day, and in that regard, i will ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of senate resolution 484, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. less 484, designating june 7, 2012, as national hunger awareness day. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the

motion to reconsider be laid on the table. fir officer without objection. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i now ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of senate resolution 485, submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 485, to authorize representation by the senate legal counsel in the case of common cause et al v. joseph r. biden, et al. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any relatd statements be printed in the record as though read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: i understand there are two bills at the deive and ask for their first reading en bloc. the presiding officer: the cloark will read the titles of the bills for the first time. the clerk: s. 3268, a bill to amend title 49 united states code to provide rights for pilots and for other purposes.

s. 3269, a bill to provide that no united states assistance may be provided to pakistan until doctor shakil afridi is freed. the presiding officer mr. whitehouse: i ph now ask for a second reading and object to my own request en bloc. the presiding officer: objection having been heard, the measures will be read for the second time on the next legislative day. mr. whitehouse: i ask unanimous consent, mr. president, that when the senate completes its business today, the senate adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on thursday, june 7, following the prayer and pledge, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and the majority leader be recognized. that the time until 10:30 a.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees,

further, that l fog the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to s. 3240, the next hour be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees with the republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, to our colleagues, i announce that it is the jocial' majoritys intention to resume consideration of the motion to proceed to s. 3240, the farm bill, when the senate convenes tomorrow. at 10:30 a.m., there will be a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the farm bill. we hope to reach an agreement on amendments to the bill during thursday's session. if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order following the remarks of senator sessions.

mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. sessions: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. sessions: mr. president, i would ask that the quorum call be dispensed with.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sessions: mr. president, every summer, the congressional budget office produces a long-term budget outlook. this is the report that they produced yesterday, which is what they do every year, and it is a grim document indeed, not a document that should give us comfort but should be a call to action, really, as to what we need to do about the financial future of our country. it's part of their effort to produce for congress objective, impartial analysis, and we all will complain about this or that from c.b.o., but they are pretty objective, and they work hard to produce the kind of information that we can benefit from as americans. and certainly we in congress need, as we deal with our challenges at this period in

history. so they - lay out over 25 years what we could expect to see if current policy is extended. and these are some of the things that they find in this report that are certainly disturbing to us. actually, they're more than disturbing. they're unacceptable. they are absolute proof that we are on an unsustainable debt corks and thew this ameans we've got to get off of it or bad things will happen. and the numbers i give you from this report, as federal reserve chairman mr. bernanke indicated, would not happen, wouldn't occur because we'll have a crisis before that. if we continue on this path. so this is what they found. on 25 years under the current policy, annual deficits would reach $5 trillion a year.

or 17% of g.d.p., and would rise steadily thereafter. in other words we'd have in one year a $5 trillion deficit. this year we expect to spend $3.7 trillion total, including defense and social security and medicare. they go ton make this finding: federal debt would reach approximately 200% of g.d.p. that is, the debt would be twice as large as the entire american economy. japan has that high a debt. it's the highest in the world. it's financed because of japanese unusual saving policies, financed painly unternally, but we're not financing our debt that way. in fact, 60%-70% of our debt

right now is being financed by the federal reserve, by buying treasuries. by the federal reserve. that's a very dangerous thing because it's in effect printing money. so this is an unsustainable path. they go on to say, annual federal spending would rise to $10 trillion a year or 36% of g.d.p. so 36% of the entire economy would be consumed by federal government spending. we're now 18%, 20%, in that range. this is an historic alteration of the fundamental concept of our government being a government of limited poshes. that's a stunning number. they go ton say this, yearly interest, what we would pay yearly, would reach $2.7 trillion. that's certainly a large number.

as i said, this year our numbers are -- we spend $3.7 trillion. federal debt according to the report will double to the size -- will be double the size of the entire u.s. economy in 2037, 25 years from now. c.b.o. agrees that higher levels of federal government debt will burden american families and destroy economic growth. we've had studies on that. the rogoff-reinhardt reports. most economists agree with this principle, when debts reach high levels, it pulls down entire economies' ability to grow. they go on to say, each family's share of the federal debt will climb to $382,000 per family,

$382,000 by 2037, or an additional $287,000 over what today's family shares of the total american debt. that's of course more than twice as much. c.b.o. warns -- quote -- "that large budget deficits and growing debt would lower growth income for the united states." lower growth incomes in the united states." close quote. according to the c.b.o. data, over the next 20 years, high debt levels will result in $21 trillion less in economic output. this is a significant reduction in economic growth, and it's out of growth that we hope to be able to close the deficit gap, and without growth we can't do it, but if we run our debt too

high, it pulls down growth and makes us even more -- makes it even more difficult for us to maintain the growth levels that we need to get our economy and our federal budget under control. they go on to say government debt will also slow economic growth by nearly 1% a year on average. supporting a landmark study done by reinhart and rogoff that quantify the effect of debt on advanced economies. i asked secretary geithner about the rogoff-reinhart study. he said it was an excellent study. then he added, in many ways it understates our problem. we were talking about this 1% factor when your debt exceeds 90% of g.d.p., you lose 1% of growth, he acknowledged the validity of that, and then went on to stay it understates the problem because when you reach that high debt level, you are

vulnerable to an economic shock, another recession, a 2007 debt crisis, a greek-like problem. government debt, the report indicates, will also slow economic growth and that 1% of slowing growth, according to numbers released by the obama administration, and i think they are pretty accurate, 1 trillion jobs is 1% of g.d.p. so if you go from 2% to 1% g.d.p. growth, 3% to 2% g.d.p. growth, you lose a million jobs. so we don't need to be losing jobs. we need to be creating jobs, and debt is a threat to the economic growth, and the idea that some people have that we can continue to borrow, borrow, borrow and

spend, spend, spend and this will create a healthy growing economy that can be sustained is absolutely false. i believe truly. c.b.o. gave this ominous warning. quote -- "growing debt also would increase the probability of a sudden financial crisis during which investors would lose confidence in the government's ability to manage its budget and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates." so it seems to me pretty clear if you look at numbers that spending is the primary cause of our long-term fiscal balance, that and a lack of growth. under both the baseline and current policy scenarios set out

by c.b.o., spending will remain well above historical averages. so it's not as if they assume that we will cut spending and we will reduce what the government spends each year. they are assuming that the spending levels will be well above historical averages, so if we return those spending levels to historical averages, i believe we then have a far better chance to get our economy under control rather than just asking the american people to send more money to washington. under current policy, annual federal spending will exceed $10 trillion or 36% of g.d.p. by 2037. it would exceed $10 trillion a year by 2037. you know, 25 years used to seem like a long time to me, but as i have gotten older, 25 years is a

shorter period of time. by 2035, the report indicates mandatory health spending, social security spending and interest costs, medicare and medicaid, mandatory health spending, social security and interest costs will consume 100% of the revenues this government is expected to receive. defense department, zero, the education department, zero, federal highway fund, zero. all of it would just be in those programs. that reveals to us the necessity of looking at those programs, to think that we can deal with the surging deficits without confronting the fact that the largest, most sustained growth areas are social security, medicare, medicaid and interest on the debt. what about raising taxes?

why don't we raise taxes? well, there are problems with raising taxes. they just -- there just is. it has consequences. it weakens the private sector. it takes more money from the private sector where the money is earned, where growth is generated and distributes it to the governmental sector, which i got to tell you is not as efficient or as productive and hasn't proven to be and has not gone through what private business has gone through, which is to make themselves more efficient, more productive and utilize technology and advanced techniques to produce more widgets for less cost. the federal government has not done that. this is what c.b.o. said -- quote -- "to the extent that additional tax revenues were generated by boosting marginal tax rates, those higher rates would discourage people from

working and saving, further reducing output and income." there is no doubt about that. this is not some right-wing scenario. you keep raising taxes on the productive sector, you're going to have less of it. you'll have -- it will discourage people from working and saving, further reducing output and incomes, close quote. that's an economic fact. it's not a scare tactic. so it's just not something we can do. why don't we just raise taxes? that's the reason. it weakens economic growth, it weakens the private sector, it empowers the government, violates our heritage of limited government and is not healthy for american families and job creation. the congressional budget office agrees that we cannot wait, we

cannot continue to delay action on the deficit. this is what they say in this report -- quote -- "waiting to address the long-term budgetary imbalance in allowing debt to mount in the meantime would be detrimental to future generations." close quote. we don't need to do things that are detrimental to future generations. we're already leaving them with more debt than we ever should, and we need to get off this path. i told this story back in marion, alabama, i was at a house, a world war ii veteran, i guess less than two years ago. mr. wheeler, since passed away, was the last person to speak, and i was listening to people's views. he said he served in -- he lived through the depression, he served in world war ii, he lived

through the inflationary period in the 1970's and 1980's and all of that, and the problem we faced was not the high cost of living. the problem we faced is the cost of living too high. and frankly, that's just what's happened. individually, we have lived too high. we had -- individual families are doing it. the government has lived too high. it's assumed too much debt. there is no way out of it, no easy way. there is no free lunch. nothing comes from nothing. somebody pays. and so to get this debt under control, we have got to manage better than we ever have, in my opinion. i just -- i just truly believe that. and we can do it. we can manage better, but it's

going to take leadership, beginning with the chief executive officer of the united states of america, and congress needs to be involved in the process, too. the federal reserve board chairman ben bernanke before the senate budget committee earlier this year testified this way -- quote -- "having a large and increasing level of government debt relative to national income runs the risk of serious economic consequences. over the longer term, the current trajectory of federal debt threatens to crowd out private capital formation and thus reduce productivity growth. close quote. the current trajectory of federal debt threatens to crowd out private capital formation and thus reduce productivity growth. and it's growth we need. it's growth we need.

that will make america more competitive. that will produce more widgets for less cost. that will allow us to export and be competitive to defeat importers by producing products better at less cost than the importers can do so. that is within our grasp, but we're getting away from that and debt is a threat to them. chairman bernanke goes on to say -- quote -- "to the extent that increasing debt is financed by borrowing from abroad, to the extent that increasing debt is financed by borrowing from abroad, a growing share of our future income would be devoted to interest payments on foreign-held federal debt. high levels of debt also impair the ability of policymakers to respond effectively to future economic shocks and adverse

events that occur periodically. economic shocks and adverse events. and high levels of debt impair our ability to react to those, make us more vulnerable to serious economic dislocations that would occur in the future. mr. bernanke also knows that on our current course, we'll never make it to the years where our debt is three, four, five times the size of our economy. he also stated about the c.b.o. outlook -- quote -- "the c.b.o. projections by design ignore the adverse effects that such high debt and deficits would likely have on the economy, but if government debt and deficits were actually to grow at the pace envisioned in this scenario, the economic and financial effects would be severe." in other words, what he said is we're not going to get there. it's not going to happen because

you're going to have a financial crisis before then. and we can see that. we had the president's fiscal commission, erskine bowles and alan simpson, they told us -- quote -- we're facing the most predictable financial crisis in our nation's history, close quote. both of them signed a statement to the budget committee just last year to that effect, and they said we could have an economic crisis in as little as two years. so we have not had a budget here in the senate, the republican house has produced a budget, but the senate democrats have determinedly refused to bring a budget up in committee or to bring one on the floor. we are now three years without a budget. while we have trips to las vegas and conferences and tax credit loopholes for children of illegal aliens, children who

don't even live in the united states are getting a thousand dollar tax credit from uncle sam, and we can't get that fixed. that seems to be too hard to do, costing $4 billion a year. so these are the kind of things that americans need to be aware of, need to be focused on. if we do so, there are a number of options that would allow us to get the country on a sound path, and we do some things that will create growth without debt, such as tax simplification that creates more growth, such as eliminating every regulation that does not serve the national interest and benefit the economy but adds costs to our productive capability in america and delays production of energy or delays production of factories and businesses, eliminate those regulations that don't make sense. that we work hard to produce more american energy, keeping

our wealth at home. we reduce the amount of debt we're running up so we're sending fewer dollars, fewer billions of dollars abroad every year after year after year just to pay the interest on the debt we run up. there are a lot of things we can do that would create jobs and growth and productivity gains in america that won't add to our debt, and we've got to find those things, and we've got to tighten our belts across the board, and the congress and the white house and down to every agency and department and government entity that exists in this country and around the world. and if everybody does that, we will surprise ourselves how much progress we can make, and i think it's not too late for us to reverse the course we're on. mr. president, i thank the chair and would yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

first lady laura bush were unveiled at white house. it was the first visit since leaving august. >> as he mentioned in 1814 dolly mad southern famously saved this portrait of the first george w.

[laughter] if anything happens, [laughter] there's your man. [laughter] once the entire event online at the c-span video library. new york times assistant business and financial editor gretchen morgenson called for more prosecutions responsible for those the 2008 financial crisis. she spoke on monday here in washington, d.c. gretchen morgenson called the damage done to taxpayer and share shareholder titanic and warned if it novembers stop it will only get worse. she won a pulitzer prize for her coverage of wall street in 2002. [inaudible conversations]

welcome to the today'sless chucialg by given given absence of accountability for the 2008 financial crisis. my name is david bobb. i serve as director at the center for constitutional studies. today's lecture made possible by a hillsdale college alumnae is part of a monthly lecture series that addresses significant from a constitutional perspective. the kirby center marks an extension of the hillsdale colleges to teaching the constitution. through teaching the enduring principals of the constitution. they seek to inspire citizens and students, teachers, policy makers and elected officials to return the principals to a central place in american public

life. you may find out more on the kirbycenter.org and via facebook and twitter. if you are viewing the lectureon line or via c-span's live extreme you may submit a question by e-mailing us at kirby lecture at hillsdale.edu. i will ask baillie jones to introduce the speaker. she is completing and internship as part of the washington hillsdale internship program which fort years we sent our undergraduates to washington for what we like to joke, a study abroad program. baillie? [applause] >> given given is the assistant business and financial editor at the "new york times." in 2002, she seven-day forecast a pulitzer prize for the coverage of wall street prior to

joining the "times" in 1998 she worked as assistant managing editor at forbes magazine and as the executive editor. she is also coauthored several books. she received her ba in english from st. olive college. she will be speaking on the topic the absence of accountability for the 2008 financial crisis. please join me in welcoming mrs. gretchen morgenson. [applause] >> thank you so much bailey and david. it really is a joy for me to be here at the kirby center today and learn more about the remarkable hillsdale college, which i don't know enough about. i have a junior in high school who is shopping for colleges. so i'm going to do a little due diligence on hillsdale for him. i appreciate the invitation to come to speak today about the issue of accountability for the

financial crisis of 2008, that we're still really trying to dig our way out of. it's something that i think few people would have predicted that four to five years after the events of 2007 and 2008 that we're still really trying to understand what happened, who did it, why and how. just going back in time a little bit, as bailey mentioned, i wassed at forbes magazine for many years before i joined the "new york times." and one of the joys of my job there was that i could write about companies doing the right thing, as well as companies doing the wrong thing. since i joined the "times" in may of '98 it felt to me, like it's been all scandal all the time. first we had the long-term capital management hedge fund debacle.

we had the interinnocent bubble. we had accounting scandals. booms and busts, currency crisis, bank failures, it's really just been an amazing fourteen years. avenue i've had a ring side seat for all of it. nevertheless, i did feel that the material that was thrown at me and other financial journalists in the years leading up to the crisis and the aftermath made all the previous cry cease seem like -- so now i feel like i'm almost an archaeologist at the historic site still digging one uncovering and shocking and really overwhelming evidence of deeply unethical activities that flourished during the mortgage mania. simply put, the amount of lying, and cheating that went on during the years leading up to the crisis is almost unimaginable.

and i'm not sure that we even know all of it yet. first, of course, we had lenders who made loans to borrows who would not pay them. the loans carried enormous fees and profits for the lenders, who then sold them to wall street. then the executive at the firms did the parts by putting toxic loans into mortgage security. they were sold to unsuspecting investors. those who bought the securities were told that the loans were high quality, and met certain standards. this was not true. when these loans failed, the only recourse that these investors had was to sue the firms that sold the securities. then, of course, there were the [inaudible] according to some who dealt directly with them knew that the loans were questionable. but assigned high grades to the

securities that held them anyway. the money generated by rating complex securities was too excel compelling. of course borrows played their part desperate to get on the rising real state market. they were too happy to fib about the lie work. their lies contributed to the mess. while the scandal use activities were going on financial regulators, the very people charged with identifying and eliminating problematic practice issue cheering on the -- even after danger signs relating to the credit mania had become obvious. officials at most regulatory agencies seemed bent on protecting the very, quote, financial innovations that had fueled the crisis.

they were coiled at blocking complex and exotic mortgage products. on the grounds they could increase the benefits of home oip. a goal that was claimed to be a win-win for everyone. and they about the marve les of drive tritts and how they spread risk ran concentratedded it. looking back, that was a whole lot of bad stuff going on. but those were just the practices during the boom years. since then during the bust, we've had a raft of bad behavior dubious practices surrounding the foreclosure crisis, for example. represents and banks in their haste to drum troubled borrows out of their homes, forged legal documents, filed phoney papers with the courts, and flouted hundreds of years of property

loss. taken together during the boom and the bust, i would argue that this is a breath-taking series of ethical break downs and compliance failures. and it lead to one of the most shattering financial crisis in our history. but importantly, it has also generated deep questions about whether our country and those in it the upper echelons of both businesses and government have lost their moral cum come pass. pop list capitalism like our system is hugely beneficial to the vast majority of people. but an ethical tradition is needed for it to work. when you have senior executives walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars, leaving share holders and innocent taxpayers holding it the bag it

become extremely dangerous. and it's more and more jobs disappear across the country, the outsized pay amast by corporate executives and wall street traders becomes even more polarizing. this is especially so when taxpayers are asked to bail out reckless companies. now the question that remains to be answered, and that will have to be tackled by ethics of far better qualified than i had, why did greed and unethical behavior go so viral during the recent period? i think one bid of an explanation lies in a rejection by some business leaders of a very powerful social compact that many of the predecessors had once embraced. that is a duty to others rather

than simply to self. according to this compact in the ideal, people in positions of power recognized that they had immense sway over investors, workers, and customers, and they agreed to hold themselves to a higher standard of care as a result. it was an unwritten rule, perhaps, but but now it seems to have been plant bid the notion that personal profits are supreme. ..

seem to view their actions much more narrowly. if you can muster an argument that what you are doing is highly profitable and not outright illegal, then go for it. who cares if it is immoral or wrong or hurts people? i have on my desk at work and all the new yorker cartoon that sums this up. in it are group of executives seated in a boardroom. the man at the head of the table is saying, remember, it's not a lie if it makes this money. lines that made some people a lot of money were a crucial elements of the credit crisis. mortgage brokers selling loans to customers who did not understand them, wall street

firms peddling securities to clients who were not told of their faulty structure. rating agencies slapping high grades on the securities they did not understand or had not scrutinized. and very few of these participants have been held accountable for their deceptions indeed, these players continue to argue to anyone who will listen that their customers come first and that their due diligence a strong. these arguments are stunningly disconnected from reality. nobel prize-winning economist summed things up pretty well when he said, american financial players created risk, misallocated capitol, and encouraged excessive indebtedness all while imposing high transaction costs. and they brought our entire economy to the brink.

but to this day we hear regulators and, of course, those in the industry extolling the praises of financial innovation. and many of the innovations that were roundly praised in the years leading up to the crisis did contribute mightily to its death and damage. credit defaults swaps and collateralized debt obligation are too perfect examples. these products amplified, expanded to the mortgage miltown and its losses. this is not what financial innovation should create. the true financial innovation should help society, not heard it. rather than raise the investors and borrowers risks through an obscure and hard to fathom investments and instruments, financial innovation should have

helped these people mitigate the risks of home ownership. instead they helped a small band of industry participants profit at the expense of the rest of us . in spite of this, we continue to hear from bankers that tighter regulation of the financial sector will cripple their innovative tendencies. indeed, these institutions, their executives, and lobbyists continued to resist significant regulation designed to prevent taxpayers from having to bail out any of their companies in the future. now, this failure to admit culpability is bad enough, but it has also been worsened, exacerbated by an even more disturbing failure by the government to assign responsibility for this mess. holding people who were central

to the crisis accountable for their roles in it have seemed just too difficult for our government regulators and prosecutors to do. let's consider the case of angelo ms. zillow, the former chief executive of countrywide financial, once one of the nation's largest sub prime lenders. he was sued by the sec in 2009 for insider trading because the regulators alleged he had publicly pronounced his company healthy while privately derided the quality of the mortgage that countrywide was writing, using words like toxic and poison in internal e-mails. he seemed to understand well the risks that his company was taking in the sub prime mortgage bill. but publicly he maintained that his company was first class and

financially sound. all the while he was selling shares that he had received as compensation while running countrywide. in fact, he sold $500 million worth of stock over several years time as the sub prime crisis was approaching. the sec said that he sold these shares improperly because he knew the dangers that were facing his company. and yet a year later in 2010 the sec struck a settlement deal requiring him to pay and just 22 and have million dollars to end the case. that is 22 and a half million against 500 million in stock sales. that is a pretty good trade. i think most of us would take that. meanwhile, the rest of the fines that were levied by the sec, 45

and a half million dollars, paid by bank of america or its insurers. so what is the lesson that we can all take away from this example? did well the getting is good and if you get bad, well, you will probably be able to get off for pennies on the dollar. during the financial crisis, in fact, it seems that we have been all too happy to lower the bar for what constitutes bad behavior. instead indeed, one of the arguments for why there have not been more criminal prosecutions following the debacle is that the actions taken by people in positions of power were not technically illegal. it certainly was not right or proper for the head of a large financial institution not to understand the risks that his underlings were taking to make their sumptuous bonuses.

was it illegal? perhaps not. and that is why some people say we see no prosecutions of those who marched bear stearns, lehman brothers, countrywide, and merrill lynch off the cliff. neither was it correct or proper to sell a mortgage security to customers that had been designed to fail. was it illegal? the investment banks who sold such things have argued that they disclosed all the necessary details in the boiler plate of the prospectuses. so they maintain they did not run afoul of securities laws. not long ago eric holder, the head of the justice department, made such a distinction. in a speech at columbia university law school he said, much of the conduct that led to the financial crisis was

unethical and irresponsible. we also have discovered that some of the behavior, while morally reprehensible, may not necessarily have been criminal. there he is explaining what everyone wants to know, why there have not been more criminal prosecutions. it is hard, i think, for many people to accept this argument. it is just too hard to believe that a financial debacle so large and so destructive as this one did not involve any criminal activity. i certainly am the first to say that i am not a prosecutor, but that i do understand well how difficult it is to mount a criminal case. but because so many people have been hurt by the destructive activities and their outcomes, it is incredibly disturbing for

many to see leaders of american corporations amid this mess walk away from the wreckage pretty much unscathed. yes, they suffered losses in their stock holdings. many are facing private litigation, but the damage that they and others like them have done to innocent taxpayers, borrowers and shareholders is nothing short of titanic. these wrecking crews appeared to have paid little for their transgressions. the trouble is, if prosecutors don't pursue a wide array of illegal activities then you wind up encouraging more of the very destructive behavior. by not punishing these practices quickly, firmly, and forcefully you incentivize the miscreants to push the envelope even further the next time. if there is no penalty for illegality, then there certainly

is not for immorality. of course, again, it is hard to mount criminal cases. but at last count only one relatively high level mortgage banking official had been sentenced to jail time in a case arising out of the meltdown. his name was leave charcas, and he led a $3 billion fraud running a lender. he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. all well and good, but there were certainly not at the center of the financial crisis. it is possible, of course, that additional indictments and prison sentences will be forthcoming. but the fact that so few people have been held accountable for this particular mess by the spring of 2012 makes some people

wonder if there is something more pernicious at work, perhaps a concerted effort to protect some of the primary participants from prosecution. this is not an idle question. given that so many high-powered players were involved in the questionable practices that led to the crisis, many hailing from wall street and washington, digging too deeply into the mess could touch some mighty participants. one might well ask whether the government really wants to identify who did what to whom during this episode. with regulators at the federal reserve, the office of thrift, supervision, comptroller of the currency and the sec so involved in allowing the bad practices leading up to the crisis to go on, you would wonder whether a hard-nosed government investigator might not wind up

proving himself or his colleagues. it is my belief that many people in washington know that if they launched a full-blown investigation of the meltdown the spotlight might soon come to their door. i think it is really important to point out that our current situation with the zero prosecutions' stands in stark contrast to what went on during the crisis of the late 80's and early 90's. that was a time when hundreds of banks failed, but in the wake of that mess special government task force's preferred at 1100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. many of these people were chief executives, not lower level flunkies. among the best known, charles

keating, ceo of lincoln savings and loan in arizona and david paul, head of centrust bank in florida. here is another data point that i find interesting because of its contrast to today. in the early 1990's president bush made it clear that ferreting out fraud at the s&l was a top priority of his demonstration. he directed the justice department to make these cases with vigor. if we fast forward to the current crisis, we find the opposite approach. in the spring of 2008, just as the storm was gathering, the fbi scaled-back plans to assign more field agents to investigate mortgage fraud. that summer, just weeks before the collapse of fannie mae and freddie mac, lehman and aig, department of justice also rejected calls to create a task

force devoted to mortgage related investigations. meeting these complex cases understaffed and poorly funded. only much later did the justice department establish a more general financial crime task force. why had there been so few prosecutions that succeeded out of this mess? some of the prosecutors that i have spoken to in my reporting argue that the types of fraud perpetrated during the s&l crisis were easier to litigate. those cases were characterized by embezzlement, self dealing, and other bad behavior that was more easily identified and exposed. what we do know, wall street likes to create complexity, and there is no doubt that the securities involved in this debacle were far more convoluted and impenetrable for investigators.

but i think a more interesting reason for the failure to prosecute lies with -- lies in an answer i have been given by some prosecutors. it brings us right back to the colossal regulatory failure that fuel to the crisis. we all know regulators declined to rein in dubious practices in the boom years, but the failure had dire consequences in addition to the millions of borrowers who were hurt. this regulatory and competence, prosecutors argue to meet them, led to a lack of prosecution in the aftermath of the bubble. that is because so many of the overseers failed in their duties to compile the kinds of the information that traditionally is used to build successful criminal cases.

in effect, the same dynamic that helped enable the crisis, weak regulation, asleep at the switch regulators, also made it harder to pursue fraud in its aftermath . let's go back to the s&l crisis to talk about how important regulatory referrals are too successful prosecutions. in that time the fbi opened 5500 criminal investigations using regulatory referrals. again, as i mentioned a moment ago, by 1992 there had been 1100's a criminal prosecutions of major bank fraud resulting in 839 convictions. a more aggressive mind-set among regulators could certainly have spurred more prosecutions this time around. according to officials who were

involved in the s&l cleanup. one of them is william black, professor of law at the university of missouri in kansas city. he was the federal government's director of litigation during the s&l crisis, and he told me that they're relaxed regulatory approach in the current episode created an exceptional criminal to five criminogenic environment there were no criminal referrals from regulators, no fraud working groups, no national task force, note effective punishment , he said. instead, we have had pretty much silence from the highest levels of government. michael, a former federal judge in new york had been head of the justice department less than a year when bear stearns failed discussed at that time setting up a task force with deputies but decided against it, announcing the decision in june of 2008.

now, there have been some attempts to put money into investigations. for example, two years into the crisis congress passed the fraud enforcement and recovery act allocating $165 million to the justice department and fbi for new financial crisis cases. congress quietly took away all but 30 million of that allocation later. so put all of these actions or inactions together, and i think you can see how this contributed to our current and frustrating situation where participants and one of the biggest economic disasters in history seemed to have skated away from the scene untouched. equally disturbing, the failure to put resources into law enforcement on these cases confirms a dangerous suspicion that many americans hold.

that is, that there are two sets of rules and our nation, one for washington, and the powerful companies that contribute to their reelection campaigns, and one for the rest of this. even when the security, the top securities guns at the sec have a clear standard to pursue executives under oxley, they come up decidedly short. after the grand fried at enron, world com, and adelle fear, congress set out to hold executives accountable if their companies took the books. under the 2002 act the sec was encouraged to hit executives where it hurt, and the wallet. if they certified financial results that turned out to be bogus. supposed to keep managers honest. they would have to hand back incentive pay back bonuses, even if they themselves did not foresee account.

that was the idea, anyway. the record suggests a bart decidedly worse than bite. the sec brought its first case under section 304 in 2007. by late 2011 it had filed cases demanding that only 31 executives at 20 companies return some day. in 2007 and eight most of the cases involved shenanigans' relating to stock options and produced some big recoveries. in the wake of the financial crisis, the dollar recouped has amounted to an asterisk. from the beginning of 2009 through 2011 the sec proceed 18 executives at ten companies. it has recovered a total of $12 million from nine former executives. other cases are pending.

half of the companies pursued by the sec during the past three years have been small and relatively obscure. for those interested in accountability in the mortgage crisis, the clawback case brought by the sec against new century financial, now defunct, but one of the most aggressive mortgage lenders out there is a severe disappointment. a partner at the law firm of kaye and no gates and the bankruptcy examiner hired to investigate new century uncovered seven different types of accounting fraud. he said it fend the pay of the company's top executives in 2005 and six. during those years he found that the company's chief executive collected almost $3 million in incentive pay.

when the sec brought its case, it considered a much narrower series of accounting irregularities and recovered only $542,000. never mind that as the examiner told me, i found many serious violations in the investigation and laid them out as clearly as possible with all the supporting information. how assiduously the sec brings these cases could not be more important. that is because only the sec can bring cases under section 304. companies cannot, and neither can shareholders. but even when it does crackdown on wrongdoers, the sec does little to discourage them from becoming recidivist. according to a new york times analysis by my colleague, nearly

all of the biggest financial companies in the nation, goldman, morgan stanley, jpmorgan chase, and think of america among them have settled fraud cases by promising that they would never again violate antifraud law. yet all of these companies were found to have done just that a few years after they made their promises. the times analysis of enforcement actions during the past 15 years found at least 51 cases in which the sec concluded that wall street firms had broken anti-fraud laws that they had agreed never to breach. the 51 cases spend 19 different companies. yet in the face of this recidivism the commission has brought brought any contempt charges against large financial firms in the last in years.

i think when we consider these facts it should not come as a surprise that trust in our nation's institutions, both public and private, have been decimated as a result of the crisis and its aftermath. the credit crisis was a two-pronged failure. first, the failure by the private sector to brain itself and or to limit itself to the appropriate business practices. second was the abysmal regulatory performance, the failure but people at the highest levels of our financial system to understand their risky practices being pursued by some of the nation's largest banks with nothing short of breathtaking. this inability or refusal to recognize peril when it was staring them in the face meant that ben bernanke and is regulatory colleagues were far behind when the sub prime crisis began to metastasize.

it seems pretty clear to me and to a lot of their readers that i hear from that many people in positions of power seem to have lost their sense of duty and obligation to others. there is a decidedly in the first approach that dominates today. i don't know how to force people in high places to forgo profit for propriety. i do know that those of us in the media can help by shining light on the dark corners where such practices often flourished. still, to regain confidence after enduring this mess i believe that at least some of the people who blew up these institutions must be held accountable for their actions. investors, pensioners to my employees, and taxpayers all have been hurt by reckless risk-taking at the highest level of some of these companies.

it will be beyond exasperatingly if the people who created this disaster and profited mightily from it are allowed to us sank off into the night. i would like to close with a quote from frederick. a rider that seems especially on. he said the following. when plundered becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. that is what we are all up against. we must not allow it to prevail. thank you very much for your attention. i will be very happy to take questions from the audience. [applause]

this person's hand shot right up. >> my name is bruce bennett. one question i have, have you let that -- had he let the banks fail in that bail them out, the country as fast as the people said it would or would we have had a better, stronger financial system? >> if the banks had been allowed to fail would we be in a better position now because -- or would we be falling off a cliff? you know, very difficult question to answer. i will answer in two parts. one is that the way that i would have liked to have seen this crisis played out if i could go and restart the movie is the real running again would be for the government to allow bear stearns to fail in march of 2008. bear stearns was a small firm. it was extremely heavily into mortgages. it had made its bed.

taken great risk, taken immense profit in this area. you know, i think that the fact that the federal reserve pushed j.p. -- jpmorgan jason to the shotgun wedding with bear stearns sent a very pernicious message to the markets and the financial firms which was that you will get help, salvage, bell about. you don't have to pay the price of failure. i think bear stearns would have been a less damaging failure if it had been allowed them lehman was, which was a larger firm with more interconnections, i think. so if i were to, you know, want to go back in time and change how things were done i would like to see what happened if bear stearns were allowed to fail. i think if it were allowed to fail people would have gotten the message pretty quick that you better get your house in order. remember, there was a six month time frame in which really very

little happened. it was the column before the storm of september 2008 when we had this nonstop failure, fannie , friday, lehman, aig. a six month window of opportunity there that i think could have been used to be much more aggressive about getting down assets on balance sheets, ticket leverage down a possible. so that is one answer. the other answer that i would say, we just have to get to a position where these large firms are not so interconnected that they can actually make the argument that if they fail they could bring down the financial system. it is clear to me that everybody who was running the country then believes that if they were allowed to fail that they would bring down the financial system. and when you talk to people about lehman brothers, they felt that that would be less from the

mint, the failure of the money market fund, except for, that that was clear. you cannot let these things fail. so reaction to me should be, how can we get these banks, institutions, brokerage firms, whenever it comes down to a size that is manageable and that won't imperil the entire financial system if they take too many risks. we have got to know where where is that kind of an approach and that is unfortunate. yes? >> room on dealer with the madison coalition. i notice that there were two groups that you did not explicitly discussed in your analysis. when are the elected politicians who empowered fannie and freddie to borrow all these. >> that is a weeklong discussion. >> and who, of course, then spend taxpayer money to bail all these folks out.

and to then, if you look at barney frank and chris dodd who were both deeply involved in the process, authored the bill allegedly to solve the problem. and the other group, you did not mention the business media. and one of the things we count on his when politicians misbehave as they generically do and when the private sector prioritizes profit and bends the rules as sometimes happened, shouldn't we actually blame the business media for not blowing the whistle on some of these activities way before they did? >> certainly agree with both of your teams. the role of legislators cannot be minimized, but, again, it is an enormously long conversation. i did tackle it in my book, reckless endangerment with my co-author. and, you know, we were quite, i

think, unsparing with the details on just how fannie mae really was the kind of leader in teaching companies how to coopt congress, how to neutralize their regulator and how to make sure that they were able to make all of the decisions about things like regulatory capital and, you know, their business model. meanwhile, get rich while they're doing it. so, yes, that is a huge topic. one that has also not been addressed in any meaningful way after the crisis. as far as the business media, i certainly would agree that they did not do -- we did not do as good a job as we should have in the years leading up to the crisis. i think there may be a couple of reasons for that. first is a kind of mindset that you have to have. i am a tough reporter. i like being a tough reporter, but it is hard. you have to have a backbone.

you have to have an editor who is willing to stand up against the pressures which are immense. and you have to have a different mindset. you don't want to be a part of the party. you don't want to be invited to the people's houses to you cover you don't want to be feeling like you are part of that scene, and there are a lot of journalists who unfortunately get sucked into the idea that they can be friends with the people that they're covering. i don't do that kind of journalism, but i think that it is unfortunate that there are quite a few who do. now, i will also say, though, that news rooms have been devastated by the internet and the creative destruction that the internet has brought to the newspaper business. and so you will have far fewer newsrooms who have local reporters covering local, you know, scandals, far fewer reporters covering business, far fewer reporters covering everything because the numbers just don't work in -- work

anymore. revenue searches are not there, and so you have to lay people off. i think that is an element that has to be recognized also. i did raise red flags very early on in 2000 -- as early as 2005 when fannie mae had their accounting scandal, talked about mortgage crises, talked about credit defaults wants very early on. so i know what you have to take from people when you take these large institutions on, and it is not fun. but if you want to try to educate, expose the truth, that is what journalists are supposed to do. i am a firm believer that that is, you know, the standard that we should hold ourselves to. i just wish there were more people that i could consider in this same. new kids coming up all the time. i am hopeful that, you know, maybe we can change the dynamic. >> a question from an online

viewer, off from houston texas asks, you have called for greater criminal prosecution against the perpetrators of the financial crisis, yet you have also noted that their actions were immoral, rather than illegal. if this is so, how what criminal charges be just considering the broke no laws? >> again, this is the question of did they break the laws. you know, not being a prosecutor and not having all of the facts at my disposal, i am unaware. i can't make the conclusion that there was broad swaths of illegality here. however, i do think it is hard to imagine that you can't bring some cases, even for regulators to bring cases. the degree to which there has been so low regulatory or criminal prosecution just sends a bad signal. you know, the case i mentioned with angela muzzle of seems to be a prime example of sort of walking away from what looks like, you know, pretty fact

oriented, fact based case. again, perhaps eric holder is right and there was no illegal activity, but i don't think -- i think that that is a perception that people don't support because i think early on my reporting and my colleagues reporting shows that early on their was a sense at the highest levels in washington that we should not pursue these institutions and so we got on a firmer financial footing. there was a sense that we did not want to aggressively pursue prosecutions while we were still trying to find our way and the dire months of 2008-9. and i think that led to a sort of a lax approach to the idea of prosecuting some of these cases.

of course we have time limits and we have all kinds of statutes of limitations that are running on these cases, whether we are talking civil or criminal . a real danger i think in the saying, let's not do anything right now until things settle down and get more call. the danger is that you let precious hours go by, weeks, months, and precious data and information that you need to have to make a case go by. but i think that what professor black has told me and other prosecutors, there certainly were civil cases that were not made there were cases that were not made strongly enough. even if those had been made at think you would have a different perception out there about accountability than we have today. yes. wait. wait for your microphone. >> sorry.

>> we are talking about the corporation. i would like your thoughts on this. corporations, executives are supposed to be responsible to the directors who in turn are responsible to the stockholders. the truth this the directors are often picked by the chairman. they socialize the night before the meeting they and their spouses have dinner and the next day the director is expected to look at that. very hard to do. behind that is the stockholder who is supposed to be able to vote the rascals out. the truth is to my can buy a stock on the phone right now and sell it in ten minutes. so i have no incentive to stand and fight. has anyone thought -- thought about some way to inject the truth scrutiny and the corporate

process that just isn't there right now? have you ever heard it brought up and discussed by anybody? >> i certainly heard the question brought up which is, why don't we have more aggressive shareholder activism or even just policing, shareholder policing because they're is a sense, and i think it is absolutely accurate, that boards are cronies of the management and that they are yes men and women and that, you know, maybe it are there to justify with their decisions are, but in any case, ceo pay keeps ratcheting up. very few people held accountable when there are disasters, you know, that are uncovered. so one of my biggest -- one of the things i think is the biggest dysfunction in the system right now is something you are leading to, which is the failure of large institutions that run your money, my money told these people accountable and hold their feet to the fire.

i mean, if i own 100 shares of exxon and that vote against the pay package, that is not going to have any impact whatsoever. if i am fidelity and i am voting shares that are held on behalf of thousands, millions of people across the country, you are going to have a lot more clout. these companies to not really take this on as a cold war as a purpose, and i find that to be very disturbing. they are running other people's money, and yet they are not acting responsibly in holding boards accountable. and holding boards accountable is really the only way that you can start to get to the point where you can hold the executives accountable. now, we have seen this year a little bit more action on paper ecdysis. we have seen some pay compensation, deals that were rejected by a majority of the shareholders. that is very unusual. that seems like it is a start.

an idea of being, you know, shareholders expressing their views, but it is a slow, slow process, and if we don't have the help of the people who are managing our money for us, if fidelity or vanguard horror name your fund company does not want to to rock the boat, perhaps because they have other dealings with the company's two shares they own, then that's a problem, and that contributes to the sort of raise a fair board approach that i think is common at so many companies. so, you know, one person said to me they thought that maybe social media could be a way to get shareholders together to act as a group. that would be great. that would be a great outcome of social media, but i have not seen it. and, again, this is a glacial process to even give shareholders to vote against

packages. so i am as frustrated as you are. >> washington's response to the financial debacle was the dodd-frank legislation, the dodd-frank law. what is your assessment of that stat sheets potential to keep such debacle's from happening in the future? i guess another way of putting that is, did congress know what it was doing when it was passing that? and did obama know but he does doing when he signed it? >> at think that dodd-frank law was -- id is 2,000 pages of, you know, impenetrable, complex details that really end up not protecting us anywhere, you know. maybe even not protecting us a bit more than we were leading to the crisis.

i like to compare it to glass stiegel. glass stiegel was 34 pages long. dodd-frank is 2,000 pages long. glass stiegel protected as for about 70 years. i don't think that frank is going to protect us for even ten. i think that the key failures in dodd-frank, first of all, they did nothing, silent on fannie mae and freddie mac. did not have the spine to go after that. second of all, they did nothing about too big to fail. now, you know, don and frank will say oh, yes we did. we put together these resolution authorities. the resolution authority is going to allow an unwinding of the threatening institution if it is too big and too large and too politically interconnected or if it is on the press of this we will unwind this through the resolution authority. the problem with the resolution authority is that it requires

the committee, the committee will vote to resolve and of -- unwind the institution. i think that that is a step that many, many people would not choose to take. it would, again, be a moment just as the moments that faced a geithner and paulson in 2008, which was it is easier just to bail it out. easier just to make the taxpayers pay and then deal with it later than it is to make the hard decisions to let a firm date amount. and these are very large and powerful firms that have a lot of friends in washington. so i am just very dubious that the resolution authority is going to work as well as a dog and frank seem to think that it will in resolving large interconnected institutions. so i think there are a lot of failures. there were some good things about dodd-frank, but for the 2,000 pages of whenever, you

know, i just don't think it put us that much closer to a time when that taxpayers can sleep a night without worrying about having to bail out companies in the future. this? >> thank you very much. my name is tyler and kneele. aspiring journalist. >> good for you. you will be a tough one. >> that is the idea. my question is regarding the idea of regulations and holding these businesses accountable. president wilson famously argued that the economy had become so complicated that we needed bigger government to rein in excesses'. yet we see a movement like the tea party that once smaller government, smaller regulations. and it seems that you are talking almost both sides of the spectrum, that it would have

been better if we had not bailed out these businesses and just let them fall apart we need more administration. >> it would be accountable. >> that would be the first to accountability. you're right. it's a fine line. you can't have zero regulation. you can't have too much regulation. where is the happy medium? i have never made the argument that there was not enough regulation on the mortgage industry or financial services industry going in to the years leading up to the crisis. there were plenty of rules on the books that the regulators just did not pursue. and so what i would say the answer is, is to have people in these jobs that have an appetite to regulate and have an appetite to really go after the problems

that they see, but there becomes this mind set and the regulatory community where you are kind of a partner with the entity that you are overseeing. you have the same, you know, kind of brain meld, as it were, almost with the bankers that you're dealing with. in fact, many of the regulators in the years leading up to the crisis were believing that the banks had the answer on their risk assessments and could be allowed to present regulators with their own assessments of risk on their books and let regulators sort of work with that instead of the regulator being the person who's sort of is the watchdog or policeman. so i think that there were rules that were completely ignored by regulators in the years leading up to the crisis. i don't feel that we needed a way more regulation at all. we just needed people with an appetite to regulate squid did not have. in fact my there were many cases , you know, partnering with

institutions, the idea of reducing capital requirements and reducing those kinds of standards. so that was, i think, a disappointing elements at work. so it is not more -- more regulation is not the answer because you have to have people who are willing to actually regulate. one of the -- in the book that josh and i wrote, "reckles endangerment," we had a conversation with barney frank when we were asking him about his undying support for fannie mae. and he had been particularly difficult and particularly obstreperous with the regulator that was put in place in the mid-90s to try to beef up regulation on fannie. and he would, you know, -- he was tough in congressional hearings. he would, you know, rail really made life difficult for this regulator. and so we asked him, what was the idea of being so hard on this guy?

he's just trying to do his job. he said, i thought that they were trying to be too adversarial. and i said, well, adversarial. adversarial kind of sounds like a good thing for rate -- red letters to be. >> no, no, no. there were too adversarial, that is not the right idea of. it is almost like a journalist. people who have read about you don't like what i've read call me adversarial. i am not a part of their corporate spin. well, regulators should not be part of the spin of the institution they're regulating. so i thought that was a very interesting comment that he made , which revealed a lot about the regulatory community and hal eight is, you know, if you'd and seen by members of congress who oversee these people. so that was kind of an eye opener for me. you know, but abbott argue for a more adversarial relationship.

>> one more question. >> this person has been very, very patient here. here you go. >> so i don't see any hope for -- >> oh, don't say that. >> actual things happening, regulators, everyone. would you think is the ultimate answer? >> the ultimate answer to getting us out of this boom bust bailout cycle? >> any illegal or immoral actions on the part of government and businesses. >> i think -- again, i think we just have to see a few cases. it would not take a lot. it would not take hundreds. it would take maybe one prosecutor who was trying to make his or her spurs to, you know, make people sit up and take notice. again, i think it is multifaceted. it goes to the question about boards, and it goes to the question of investors.

and so, you know, it is massive. and so there are a lot of failings at every step of the weight. so what can we do as individuals to try to change this dynamic? this is the toughest question i get, and i am very disappointed to say that i don't have a ready answer. it does feel like individuals are powerless. it does feel like individuals have no voice. particularly up against an ever increasing power on the other side, some of these very important issues. so i am not without hope, but i think that the idea is that people have to take some of this on themselves. whether it is, you know, complaining to your phone company if you don't like the way they vote your shares, voting no against excessive pay and companies, even if you only have tin shares. it is a message that you can send, but it really is -- i agree with you.

so there is a sense that it is not calling to get a lot of traction. and that is unfortunate. because we are ultimately the people who are paying the price. thank you very much for your time. [applause] >> the labor department official said today that a proposed change to the way the u.s. job numbers are released is to prevent traders from getting access to market information before the general public. part of that house oversight hearing which will air in its entirety at 10:00 eastern here on c-span2. >> chairman, congressman, members of the committee. i think the committee for the opportunity to appear today. i want to express my particular appreciation to the committee for its engagement in this issue bloomberg news provides data, news, analytics to decision makers and industry beyond

finance. bloomberg news is delivered through the bloomberg professional service. television, radio, mobile, the internet, and magazines. bloomberg business week and bloomberg markets. we are syndicated in hundreds of newspapers globally. we cover the world with more than 2,000 reporters and editors and 146 bureaus and more than 70 countries. we are experts at publishing economic statistics and disseminating market information . media stakeholders are making progress with the department's in arriving at a place that will not undermine the first amendment, will not reduce transparency and accuracy or create unacceptable cyber security risks. while no conclusive agreement has been reached, a movement that we have seen it will not have been possible without the engagement of members of this committee and committees and members in both chambers of both

parties. we are particularly thankful to senator for his engagement. on april 10th, without the notice and comment dictated under the administered procedures act, the dol announced a dramatic policy shift. henceforth reporters and editors would be required to use only government software, government hardware, government lines, government notebooks, and government hands. the use of this software with greater accuracy and context it provides would be prohibited. all transmission would be via the internet, not through secure lines. the department of labor would own and operate the lines, control internet access, and control of genet connections, creating a single point of failure because of news organizations was share the same infrastructure. although the policy change was unprecedented, it was presented as non-negotiable, and news

organizations were required to remove their software, hardware, and dedicated lines from the department by june 16th. this proposal threatens the first amendment. the government would literally, the reporter's notebook, unlike any other federal agency. the department of labor is requiring that reporters break news articles on government owned and operated computers on a regular basis which would give the government unfettered access to a reporter's notes, no administration anywhere should have access to a reporter spots, draft, or notes as a condition for covering the news, let alone news of such importance. the proposal also -- i'm sorry, the order also threatens national security. house, senate, and administration have read this been a great deal of time attempting to address potential cyber security threats,

protecting our financial markets from destruction by cyber attack has been a key part of that discussion. in the world in which we now live, to the department of labor to deliberately forced the transmission of data away from secure, dedicated lines and instead mandate its transmission via the internet is inexplicable the vulnerability of the internet coming even accidental destruction is a large part of the reason why news organizations have invested in their own secure lines. the prospect of a deliberate destruction, potential spoofing, potential market manipulation is real. on august -- in august last year the part of labor website went down following the release of the monthly employment situation report, the unemployment rate was unavailable for one-hour. if the april 10 order, mr. chairman, goes into affect the result would be potentially

catastrophic. this proposal will increase market vulnerability and volatility. in the modern era of computerized trading people compete in nanoseconds. studies of the 2010 flash crash illustrate how quickly small incidents can result in major disruptions. when the department of labor hosted a conference call on april 16th ostensibly to answer media questions on the new policy, i asked, what is the problem you think you imagine this would prevent? the department of labor response was, i think we are going to move on. operator, we will take the next question. the alleged rationale for the new policy has gradually slipped out in dribs and drabs. ultimately rely on a report by the national laboratories which has the chairman noted has not been publicly released.

the dll has a list of new policies necessary because of unauthorized people planted unauthorized equipment in the department's communications closet. this is an argument for enforcing the existing policy, not imposing draconian laws. the report speaks of those two oppose the department recommendation as adversaries. that is according to a summary, mr. chairman, which has circulated on the hill. although their willing to bend and potentially violate the law, violence is unlikely as an operational methods. does the department believes the media are adversaries? what rules and laws are we likely to break? what evidence or experience is such a statement based? continues stating, the apparent root cause with the issues driving this assessment is the possible presence of out rhythmic traders and/or their

agents in the press lock up facility. has the lock up been infiltrated by hedge firms? the public present congress would be entitled to that information. is it that difficult to distinguish between an authentic news organization and a hedge fund? most significantly, is the root cause of the issues driving this assessment, the possible presence of out redneck. why not just expel them from the lock up. mr. chairman, this proposal does undermine the first amendment, reducing transparency, potentially reduces the accuracy of the data coming increases volatility and poses a cyber security threat. given the dll refusal to extend the current june 15th date for removing equipment, the calendar will dictate helped shortly seeking an injunction, almost a comprehensive overall agreement is reached. ..